Governance is not only about solving problems, it is also about strengthening the capacity to recognize and take advantage of opportunities, like those presented with networking (Kooiman et al., 2005). In this sense, the establishment of the SWWRAC was recognized by the stakeholders as an opportunity to meet face-to-face, enabling a better understanding of which objectives were being advocated by whom and how they were being formulated in order to achieve them. In effective governance, the roles, interaction rules, and processes are clear to all stakeholders (Kooiman et al., 2005). Yet, too many discussions are described to be held in a dispersed way and questions are asked but remain
unanswered. Informants also mention instances of inopportune and incoherent monologues that monopolize debates, causing frustration among stakeholders whenever turned into systematic complaints or lobbying. The SWWRAC was not designed for the purposes of lobbying.
64 Still, the SWWRAC structure is relatively new to most of the stakeholders, and it must be analyzed as part of the power dynamics where stakeholders are defending their interests relative to each other in competition for the best possible expected outcomes. These outcomes tend to interfere in people’s livelihood’s, especially the fisher’s, and by such tend to shape the economic, social and political actions of stakeholders, but in a way that does not necessarily provide equal opportunity for all.
Lobbying might be a consequence of the contrasts in power dynamics, as some interests are better organized and therefore better advocated.
As the assessment suggests, the stakeholders’ organizational capacities, economic and political weight vary significantly, also between working groups, e.g. between “Pelagic and ICCAT” and “traditional fisheries”. The disparity between their organizational and economic resources and their technical expertise generates tension, notably between the small-scale organizations represented in the
traditional fisheries working group and the larger fishing organizations represented in the Pelagic and ICCAT. Interestingly, stakeholders from within the fishing sub-catching sector (involving both small and large industries) stated that they try to avoid confrontation between themselves, seen as it creates an influential drain vis-à-vis the interest of environmental NGOs.
Thus, with the introduction of the SWWRAC, the authority of fishers seems to have declined while the possibilities of the environmental NGOs to formally influence policy seem to have increased.
Moreover, the industry’s lobbying effort may also be a response to the perceived influence that ENGOs have outside the SWWRAC, at the central EU level. Industry stakeholders described documents sent to RAC appreciation as “very green” from the outset, implying an amalgamation of interests from the EU Commission and the NGOs. The lack of legitimacy towards the EU Commission is as a result galvanized in expressions like: “we don’t have a Commission for fisheries, what we have is fisheries for the Commission” (Informant B). Yet, another interpretation could be that the
Commission’s proposals for sustainable fisheries are mostly based on biological objectives, and to a lesser degree on social and economic factors. The segregation of the biological, i.e. environmental factor from the social and the economic factors do not make sense for the fishing industry, because sustainability is argued to be the function of the balance of all three factors.
6.2.2 Stakeholder participation
Interactive governance theory argues that institutionalized stakeholder participation initiated by governing agencies can take several modes, from the least to the most participative: hierarchical governance, co-governance and self-governance (Kooiman et al., 2005). In the fisheries sector, the
65 level of participation put in place is generally linked to the type of governance model. Three models can be distinguished accordingly: centralized, advisory, and delegated, along which governing agencies’ responsibilities decrease while stakeholders’ responsibilities increase. The SWWRAC is typical of an advisory governance model, where the final decision remains the responsibility of the EU Commission and the member states. In this sense the introduction of the RACs did not move
governance beyond a thin version of co-governance.
There is a widespread understanding that getting the decision-making process closer to the
stakeholders is a necessary precondition to deliver legitimacy to the CFP framework, understood as the ability to resolve conflicts, reach sustainable goal consensus, and ultimately secure compliance. The concept of sustainable development has become an important symbolic legitimation of global fisheries governance. Yet, the criteria for defining the concept of “sustainable fisheries” are not universal; they include aspects from the natural, economic and social realms, which are context specific and difficult to commensurate. Paradoxically, it is precisely the difficulty in defining and applying the concept of sustainability, at the first order of governance, that incites the EU Commission to the effort of consulting the SWWRAC – while engaging stakeholders in fishery governance, the EU Commission seeks – to guarantee compliance with regulations. Thus, the consultation process put in place by the EU Commission includes implicitly a process of cooperation between RAC stakeholders. However, in a participatory and deliberative process, consultation and cooperation are two distinct concepts. A consultation can be understood as simply collecting stakeholders’ opinions without seeking agreement between them, while a cooperation process envisages interaction and implies an exchange of
arguments between participating stakeholders and governors until a consensus is achieved.
In the case of the SWWRAC, the EU Commission asks stakeholders to cooperate until they reach an agreement between themselves, but does not participate actively itself in this process. Rather than placing the issue of legitimacy with the stakeholders, it could be claimed that that legitimacy is
intrinsic to the governance system, and therefore whether it is legitimate can be partly explained by its actual design, not by how it is presented by governors and received by stakeholders. Attention should also be directed at the interactions that take place among stakeholders and how these are
communicated, negotiated, and acted upon. In its 2008 evaluation of the functioning of the RACs, the EU Commission described their mission as follows: “Regional Advisory Councils (RACs) were established to enable the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to benefit from the knowledge and experience of fishermen and other stakeholders and to take into account the diverse conditions throughout Community waters” (EC, 2008). Taking into account, or not, the SWW RAC’s advices by the EU Commission is in the center of the stakeholders’ preoccupations. Whether or not it is necessary
66 to have consensus on advices is a subject for debate among stakeholders and EU Commission
representatives. On the one hand, fishing industry representatives consider that reaching consensus on most advices is a demonstration of the quality of these recommendations, and hence perceived as more influential in the decision-making process. On the other hand, the representatives from other interest groups, especially from the NGOs, are not always satisfied with the hard choices and compromises they have to make to reach consensus.